One way I’ve been getting some time to my own thoughts is hitting the YMCA right at 4 PM – before the evening rush, but just as the childcare opens. I can listen to music really loud and work out a few aggressions / sorrows. I also can look straight ahead and see high school boys on the swim team, diving off the diving board. Today one was wearing a speedo with a pirate flag smack over the bum.
While on the treadmill this evening the man next to me (OK he’s running, I’m walking, but he’s doing a SLOW run and I was on longer) kept looking over. Trying to catch my eye. He looked familiar to me. But he had his headphones in and so did I, so I didn’t ask if I knew him. At one point I looked over and he was using the headphones to watch sports statistics on the treadmill TV (yes, there is a television in the treadmill!). I on the other hand was listening to Panic! At the Disco, The Kinks (simply cannot get enough), and Radiohead – while occasionally looking up at the CC set to watch Tom Hanks on Oprah (this all worked very well for me). After a while the man started to smell, or rather his smell wafted to me. It was part man-funk and part stale doggy. I have a very sensitive nose so, just because I can smell you doesn’t mean you should worry you particularly smell bad. By way of illustration: one summer day (pregnant was I) my husband and his friend Bart came inside my parents’ house and I, from fifteen feet away, said, “You smell like bark. Were you climbing trees?” to their very shocked expressions because of course, they did and they had been.
OMG OMG OMG!!! I like, completely finished the first issue of my zine… ohgeez. So yeah. Download here at the – oh yes, did I mention? I (well, RALPH and I) finished the website, too. You can go to “Current Issue” and download the PDF – it’s a rather large file so give it a few minutes.
